Ian Costello: Munster driven by desire to give veteran trio a fitting Thomond send-off
Munster’s Stephen Archer, Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray after the game. Pic: James Crombie
Munster boss Ian Costello said their season-saving performance had been driven by a desire to give Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Stephen Archer the Thomond Park send-off they deserved as his team inflicted a bonus-point victory over derby rivals Ulster to boost their URC play-off hopes.
Munster snapped a three-match losing streak to get their URC play-off bid back on track with a six tries to two win 38-20 on Friday night to climb back into the vital top eight positions ahead of Saturday’s penultimate round games and keep their hopes alive of Champions Cup qualification for next season.
With one round remaining and a home game against Benetton in Cork next Friday night, Munster are in control of their own destiny, needing to win their final regular-season game at Virgin Media Park to ensure knockout rugby beginning later this month and top-flight European rugby next term.
Their victory proved to be the perfect send-off for O’Mahony, who scored a memorable second-half try, and his fellow veterans Murray and Archer, all of whom will depart at the end of the season, each having served their province for their entire professional careers.
So there was relief on several levels as interim head coach Costello assessed the impact of Friday night’s final outing of the season at Thomond Park "The biggest relief... we all know there's play-offs, we know what's at stake in terms of Champions Cup, what it means for the club,” Costello said.
“We know that there's a huge amount of external pressure but actually this week, we went a lot deeper than that. We knew that was there. It was about Peter, it was about Conor, it was about Stevie. It was about what they've done for the club, how they deserve to be sent off.
“We had a meeting on the pitch tonight and Tadhg (Beirne, the club captain) spoke so well and it really captured the whole week around putting a performance out there that reflected how much those lads meant to us and meant to the club. That's more powerful than anything. And it probably reflected what those lads meant to us. In a lot of elements, without being perfect, I think we did that. That's the relief."
Man of the match Tom Farrell took his try tally against Ulster to five for the season with a score in each half in Limerick to follow up his match-winning hat-trick in Belfast last December and having led only 24-20 at half-time the centre acknowledged the significance of big second half from Munster as they kept the visitors scoreless after half-time.
“Massively. We always knew it was going to be tough coming into today but before the game we spoke about putting the table aside and focusing on sending the five lads off and thankfully we did that today.”
New arrival Michael Milne, Farrell’s first of the night, a charge down try from Tadhg Beirne and a maul try from Niall Scannell brought up the bonus point by the 34th minute, before Farrell added another after the break and O’Mahony had the Thomond Park crowd on their feet by grabbing the sixth of the night on the hour mark.
“Really pleased with the second half, but really pleased with some elements of the first as well,” Costello said. “We laid our stall out in terms of physicality. We used it as a measure of work rate and how to match theirs, and to the eye it looked like we were starting to get the ascendancy there.
“We felt we laid a good foundation in the first half without it being pretty, and capitalised on it in the second half.”
Ulster head coach Richie Murphy admitted his side had not been good enough as they fell five points off the top eight and are facing a first season without top-flight European rugby in the 30-year history of the competition.
“I think even in the first-half we worked quite well to get the scores that we got,” Murphy said of tries for centre partners Stuart McCloskey and Jude Postlethwaite. “I think we probably gave away a few scores a little bit easy.
“Our breakdown tonight was exposed a little bit, our speed, our ability to stay on our feet and our ability to get into that breakdown quickly, Munster probably got the better of us. We put a lot of pressure on their lineout, took away a lot of launch.
“The scrum stuff is mind-boggling. I just don’t understand what is going on in the scrum. But ultimately in the second-half we didn’t look after the ball in our end, we didn’t get out of our end for 10 or 15 minutes of the second-half and obviously some of the points come on the back of that – ball is blocked down, it goes into our in-goal area, we touch the ball down, it’s 22 drop-out, not a goal-line drop-out.
“A couple of phases later they score from that. Things like that just go against you and it’s against us for most of the year.
“We’re massively disappointed to now miss out on the top eight but we will regroup. We have a group of players, obviously some are massively experienced and some are very, very young players who are learning at this level.
“These games over the last number of weeks will massively stand to us going forward but ultimately at this moment in time, we’re not good enough.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
